How musicians can make an easy profit by selling their merch online

There’s a wide variety of people and businesses that are using Printful, and more and more often we’re seeing musicians and bands selling their posters on their websites. And for good reason! It’s an easy way for a band to make some extra money for minimal effort, plus it gives the website a bit more substance and leaves more time for creating more music.

An online store is something you’ll want to get behind anyways, so that you’d have a platform to sell your music.

Make money – sell your by-product

If you’re like the majority of musicians, chances are you could use the few extra bucks. What better way to do that than selling t-shirts and posters with your already existing materials – your album cover art, publicity photos, or logo.

The key is to take images that you already have made up – your album cover art, your band logo, any epic photos of your performances. That way you’re not losing time by creating stuff to be sold, what you’re really doing is squeezing out every little bit of value of every image you have.

Album covers are iconic and forms of art in themselves. Why not profit off of yours?

Make more time for your art

You’re an artist because making art is what you love and what you’re good at. However any hobbyist-turned-professional knows that there are a ton of other things that come into play when you start working in your dream industry that don’t include making your art – things like bookkeeping, paperwork, promotional work, etc.

By setting up your merchandise store with Pritnful, all of the purchases will automatically be sent to us, printed by us, and shipped by us. That means you never have to deal with the hassle of holding and shipping t-shirts and posters.

Added bonus – make your fans happy

They get year-round access to their favorite band’s t-shirt – they don’t even have to wait for the tour. This way you can access fans all over the world.

Good case example – how DUB FX did it

Take a look at how DUBFX created their band’s merch page. You can get their albums, their posters, their t-shirts. This is a great example of an artist maximizing their online presence to create an alternate source of income.

In their store you’ll find a pinboard-style array of their products – their albums, the cover-art-turned-posters (demonstrated that they ARE posters by showing a person holding the poster, as well as their convert DVD and even their own branded t-shirt.

A screenshot of the DUB FX merch page

How it works in 3 simple steps

The process is simple. In your online store you set a price for the goods you’re selling. When that good is ordered, the order goes straight to us. You pay us a fraction of what your customer payed. We print out and send your order.

1. Make an online store (if you don’t already have one)
– we integrate with some of the most popular ecommerce platforms; take a look at all of our integrations here

2. Upload the products you want to sell
– you can upload anything you want to sell, but keep in mind that Printful will only be able to fulfill the orders that go through us (aka the clothing and poster element)

3. Sync it with Printful
– essentially you just have to follow the step-by-step instructions along the way. If you have any trouble, you can get in touch – we’d be glad to help you!

The just wait for the cash to roll in 🙂

Do you have a music group that uses Printful? Write to us at julia@printful.com and share your story! We might be able to feature you.